While researching a market and a products viability is one of the first steps to building a company, entrepreneurs often overlook the value of collecting specialized data and becoming an industry expert. As Dan Shapiro explains in the video below, “creating your own source of data gives you something other people value and need,” and can act as a currency for people that help you.

Dan Shapiro is the Founder and CEO of Sparkbuy- which was recently acquired by Google - and he also was the Co-Founder and CEO of Ontela, which merged with Photobucket. His companies have received numerous awards, and Shapiro himself has been named CEO of the Year by MobileBeat.

In his talk below from the Seattle Founder Institute, Dan walks through a tactical step by step framework to research a market on a shoestring budget using Mechanical Turk, Surveymonkey, Google Adwords, and Excel. He explains how to build and optimize surveys, ways to evaluate ideas, and analyzing results.

If you like the video below, check out Dan's blog and follow him on Twitter @danshapiro.